By Alex Mott

The Barcelona forward has claimed the accolade for the continent's top league goalscorer, bagging himself a half century of strikes during the 2011-12 season

Lionel Messi has won the European Golden Shoe award as the continent's top scorer.

The Argentine superstar scored an incredible 50 league goals over the campaign, and finished the season four goals clear of nearest rival Cristiano Ronaldo in La Liga.

Messi failed to find the net on Saturday, as Barcelona drew 2-2 with Real Betis in Pep Guardiola's final league game in charge of the Catalans. But he could not be caught by Ronaldo, who netted just the one as Real Madrid beat Malaga 4-1 at the Santiago Bernabeu.

Robin van Persie ended the term on 30 goals, but failed to find the net as Arsenal beat West Brom 3-2 at the Hawthorns to confirm the Gunners place in the Champions League next season.

The Bundesliga came to a close last weekend, where Klaas-Jan Huntelaar and Mario Gomez finished on 29 and 26 goals respectively.

In fifth place, Zlatan Ibrahimovic became the first person to win the capocannoniere (Serie A's top scorer award) with two different clubs as he ended his campaign with 28 goals for Milan, despite not scoring in their 2-1 win at home to Novara.

Wayne Rooney came in closely behind with 27 goals, as he bagged the winner in Manchester United's 1-0 win at Sunderland.

Four players made up the rest of the places, all joined on 48 points for the season. Burak Yilmaz failed to find the net in Trabznspor's 1-1 draw with Besiktas on Friday as he ended the campaign with 32 goals.

Bas Dost's season wrapped up last weekend as he helped Heerenveen to fifth in the Eredivisie with 32 strikes.

Radamel Falcao ended his season on a high, as he scored a late winner for Atletico Madrid as they beat Villarreal to condemn the Yellow Submarine to relegation. He is joined at 24 goals with Diego Milito, who rounded off his superb 2012 with a penalty for Inter as they went down 3-1 to Lazio at the Stadio Olimpico on Sunday.

In 1967-68, French football magazine L'Equipe opted to hand out an award to the top goalscorer in all European leagues for his good performances during the season. Between 1968 and 1991, high profile names such as Eusebio, Gerd Muller, Ian Rush and Marco van Basten won the coveted trophy.

However, the gap between big and small leagues started to grow in the early 90s and L'Equipe decided to make the competition unofficial after the Cyprus Football Association (CFA) issued a protest in 1991. Darko Pancev won the award that season with 34 goals, but the CFA claimed that a player had scored 40 goals in Cyprus that term.

Adidas, sponsor of the awards, still handed out the trophy until 1996 before European Sports Magazine (with L'Equipe as a member) decided to make the title official again. ESM divided all European leagues in three groups according to strength, and attached to each group a quotient by which the number of goals is multiplied to obtain the player's rating. The European Golden Shoe was thus no longer necessarily handed to the top goalscorer, but to the player with the most points.

The weightings are determined by the league's ranking on the Uefa coefficients, which in turn depend on the results of each league's clubs in European competition over the previous five seasons. Goals scored in the top five leagues according to the Uefa coefficients are multiplied by a factor of two, and goals scored in the leagues ranked six to 21 are multiplied by 1.5. Goals in all other leagues are all worth one single point.

This measure has prevented players from so-called weaker leagues from winning the European Golden Shoe, since a goal scored in, for example, Armenia, Estonia or Azerbaijan, carries less weight than a goal scored in Serie A, La Liga, the Bundesliga or the Premier League.

Players such as Thierry Henry, Cristiano Ronaldo, Diego Forlan and Lionel Messi have won the European Golden Shoe in the past few seasons.